Little Traverse Bay ice: here today, gone tomorrow?

Stand on the Petoskey side of Little Traverse Bay, and far across, you might be able to spy a few fishing shanties.

Sherrie Elliott, water and wastewater supervisor for Petoskey's Department of Public Works, said she thinks the bay froze mostly over in early February.

"We keep track of the temperature for the city and for NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), but we have a pretty good idea of when it froze over. It was somewhere around Feb. 7 or 9, but we don't put that down in stone," said Elliott.

She said the leading edge of the ice line changes based on wind direction — a quality that makes Great Lakes ice different from inland lake ice, said Lt. James Gorno with the Department of Natural Resources Gaylord Operations Service Center.

The tendency for Great Lakes ice to move with the direction of the wind is also what makes it less predictable and more dangerous than inland lake ice.

"Great Lakes ice is just a totally different animal," said Gorno. "It's all shove ice and pack ice."

By that, Gorno means that ice floes form in bays, and the wind pushes the ice floes around. Wind from the west will push ice into Little Traverse Bay, and cold temperatures freeze ice floes together.

"The ice floes look like a pack. They're all fused together, either the size of cars or as big as buildings," said Gorno. "But because they're probably all formed within that bay, they're pretty much all the same thickness."

With experience, knowledge and an eye on weather conditions, anglers and others should be able to determine whether ice on the bay is safe enough to venture out on, said Gorno.

"If we have a super cold winter, (ice on the bay) will lock right up and it won't go anywhere," said Gorno. "But normally, Great Lakes water is always moving. The ice is always shifting."

The ice floes are probably thick. Anglers can check the ice with a spud as they walk out to their fishing destination, and they should check the ice thickness every day to make sure it's still thick enough. But they should also keep a close eye on the forecast.

"Any day, you could have the wind shift and push all that ice back out into the main body of water," said Gorno. "Any of the Great Lake waters are very unpredictable."

Elliott said she and the other public works department employees have long seen shanties out on the ice so far this season.

"I remember the comment, because we noticed shanties before we would have considered the bay frozen over," she said. "The first week in February, we noticed people were out there."

Even so, Elliott said she has noticed what looks like open water on the Harbor Springs side of the bay.

"But when I look out toward Lake Michigan, to me, it looks like it's still ice. So I don't know at what point the water is open," she said.